The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

184 CINE TECHNICIAN December 1956 TWENTY YEARS OF TELEVISION i^wN the second of November 1936 ^-* the world's first public television service opened at Alexandra Palace, London. The baby, hitherto a foundling, had somewhat unwilling foster-parents in the BBC, in which capacity the Government had ordered the Corporation to act. With characteristic ineptitude and muddle-headedness the Committee set up by the Government to decide upon the child's future had been unable to make up its mind as to which of the two competing technical systems should be used, with the result that both — EMI and Baird — were put into operation simultaneously at considerably greater cost, obviously, than would otherwise have been the case had a firm decision been taken in the face of evidence quite overwhelmingly in favour of the technical superiority of EMI. Gerald Cock, the first Controller of Television — or C.Tel, as he was officially designated by the BBC's own peculiar internal jargon — was considered a ' safe ' man, hitherto in charge of Outside Broadcasts. He now revealed himself to be a veritable battering ram of energy and drive, choosing his staff with meticulous care, and setting standards which kept everyone at fever pitch. Thus by 1939, when the war abruptly shut down the service, many technical advances had been made and much programme work done artistically which has not been surpassed to this day. ' Hand of Brothers ' The ' band of brothers ' went ' into the breach ' with an official opening by the then PostmasterGeneral followed by a programme of variety turns accompanied by the BBC Television Orchestra conducted by Hyam Greenbaum, who Our Cover Norman Wisdom makes a good start at a banquet at Pinewood Studios during lunch-hour break from his film " Up in the World ". I Still hv Arthur Lemon. had hand-picked his men. Although this splendid body of musicians on this occasion suffered the indignity of accompanying a little signature ditty whose opening lines were — I'm looking at you From out of the blue, very soon they were tackling works as complex and various as By Dallas Bower a first performance in the United Kingdom of Busoni's opera Arlecchino and Spike Hughes' superb jazz ballet High Yellow. The Baird system was dropped after the first six months of operation. Highly ingenious as a laboratory experiment, the practical shortcomings of the system, with its non-electronic cameras and erratic mechanism of scanning film negative immediately after development, should have been seen from the beginning. There was never any doubt in the minds of the engineers, the production staff, and if I may add without immodesty, the two producers — Stephen Thomas and myself — that the success or failure of the service lay entirely with EMI. Like the Dark Days The pressure on all concerned in the first year of BBC television was exceedingly high and not a little reminiscent of the dark days of British film production methods at their quota quickie worst. But everyone at Alexandra Palace had the pioneering spirit and was prepared to bla^e a trail, otherwise, clearly, he or she would not have been there. The service owes an incalculable debt to D. H. Munroe, its first Production Manager, whose dayby-day running orders made programmes possible with such relatively slender resources, and to Leonard Schuster and Anthony Rendall, whose financial ability and good judgment certainly kept the baby from falling out of its perambulator and destroying itself in its swaddling clothes. As to Douglas Birkenshaw, the Engineer-in-Charge, it is a miracle he survived pushing the vehicle. Although as producer or director or both, I have probably been responsible for putting more live television entertainment on the air than anyone living, I believed in 1936 and I believe today that ultimately television will not survive without film any more than the gramophone would have done without music. The fallacy of immediacy (the actor, dancer, singer, etc., actually being there at the moment of viewing) has long since been apparent. A film, Hamlet, for example must ipso facto be better intrinsically than a live television production of Hamlet. The future of live television lies in actuality — sport, public events, and, alas! parlour games and their like. I cannot envisage the day when live television will ever be able to measure up to the excellence of say, Alexander Nevesk}/ (which incidentally was seen at least a dozen times by the early camera operators to school them in visual composition) whether a TV Eisenstein arises or not. The physical freedom of the cinema, with its total lack of a space-time continuum which is its quintessence as a medium, live television does not, and never can, possess. There will be an EDITORIAL SECTION NEW YEAR TARTY on Friday, January 11, 1957 at THE CORONET, Soho Street. W.I commencing at 8 p.m. Tickets 11/6 eaeh Enquiries should be made through A.C.T.T. Head Office